Groundbreaking new artificial intelligence text generation software built by a company backed by Elon Musk is too dangerous to make public, its creators say.

OpenAI, a nonprofit artificial intelligence research group, said their GPT-2 software is so good they are worried it could be misused.

The software generates coherent text, and can be prompted to write on certain subjects or in a certain style by feeding it paragraphs of source material.

The algorithm was trained on eight million web pages and the results are far better than any previous attempt at computer text-generation, where odd syntax changes and rambling nonsense have been difficult to iron out.

The success of the software has seen it dubbed “deepfakes for text”, and among the core concerns are that it could be used to generate unstoppable quantities of fabricated news or impersonate people online.